...trudging into the distance in the bleeding stinking mad shadow of Jesus...the Lord out of dust had created him, had made him blood and nerve and mind, had made him to bleed and weep and think, and set him in a world of loss and fire... --Flannery O'Connor

My old friend Lucifer came / Fought to keep me in chains / But I saw through the tricks / Of six-sixty-six --Johnny Cash

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On Subversion and Shame: I Like the Color Pink

This has, interestingly, caused not a few people to feel perplexed by me.

The reason for this is that pink is a feminine color. So if you're a man who likes pink this is considered to be strange and deviant.

A part of my fondness for pink has to do with growing up in the 80s where there was a phase of preppy-based chic with khaki pants and pastel colored shirts--yellow, blue, green and pink. More, the pastel colors of Don Johnson in Miami Vice made pink both masculine and cool. In fact, for a senior prom I once went in a white tux from the Miami Vice collection complete with pink tie and cummerbund. Quite a look.

The point is, I grew up liking pink.

But here's the problem. Apparently, pink is really only allowed for men if it's a pink shirt (or a tie). And even that's a statement, particularly here in West Texas. But pink outside of that boundary is considered weird.

For example, given that my hair is long I like to wear bandanas to keep my bangs out of my eyes. I use bandanas sometimes as men aren't allowed to wear headbands. That's what Jana told me when I floated the idea of wearing one. Instead, I use a fake headband called "reading glasses." I use the glasses to pull my hair back as seen in my Streaming video and in the videos with Rachel Held Evans. Side benefit: this is a "headband" that makes me look intellectual.

Anyway, I wear bandanas to keep my hair out of my face (as seen here). And my favorite go-to color for the bandana is pink.

This always makes people do a double-take. Good God, a man with a pink bandana! For example, last fall I was at a High School football game and I was wearing the pink bandana. On Monday one of Jana's colleagues asked, "Did I see Richard wearing a pink bandana at the game on Friday?" Jana responded, "Yeah. Richard likes pink. Why do you ask?" "No reason," she said, "I've just never seen anything like that before."

Few have. At least where I live.

This came to a funny head a few weeks ago. I was given as a gift an Otter Box (a protective case) for my iPhone. I had to order it from our college bookstore. The Box I had before was all black and I found that boring. So the young lady who was helping me was walking me through all the accent colors: navy blue, yellow and, you guessed it, pink.

"I like the pink one," I said.

"The pink one?"

"Yes. I like pink on black. Don't you?"

"Uh, yes. But this is for you, right?"

"Yes. Is that odd?"

"Well, you don't see a lot of guys get pink iPhones."

"It's not totally pink. It's mainly black."

"That's true. But it's still pink."

Yes, I know. But I like pink. Social convention be damned.

Anyway, my iPhone is now a constant source of conversation.

Now why am I telling you all this? Well, the other day I was thinking about the power of social stigma and shaming. Most people wouldn't ever cross a social boundary like this (e.g., getting a black and pink iPhone), even at the expense of their own preferences. The shame, the "sticking out" it just too heavy a burden to bear.

But I wonder. If Christians are supposed to be a "peculiar people" we might need to learn to inoculate ourselves against social shaming. We might need to practice, on a regular basis, small acts of social non-conformity. We need to get used to not caring what people think. We need to become immune to shame.

This reminds me of the shame-attacking exercises of the psychologist Albert Ellis. When working with clients who were totally paralyzed by social shame Ellis would have them do something in public that was both very noticeable and very ridiculous. The most famous example is pulling a banana around on a string in a public place like a mall. Here's a video example of this.

Now most people, those who are terrorized by the opinions of others, would say to Ellis, "I could never do that! It would be too embarrassing." But why live life being bullied by embarrassment? Who cares if people look at you? Who cares if they laugh?

Exactly. The world isn't going to end if people think you're a bit off your rocker. Just look at me.

So learn to embrace your own version of the pink iPhone. Engage in small acts of subversion. Vaccinate yourself against shame. Buck the system.

It might be one of the most important spiritual exercises you practice.

36 thoughts on “On Subversion and Shame: I Like the Color Pink”

Intriguingly, pink is historically a very manly colour.An article in the trade publication Earnshaw's Infants' Department in June 1918 said: "The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl." From then until the 1940s, pink was considered appropriate for boys because being related to red it was the more masculine and decided color, while blue was considered appropriate for girls because it was the more delicate and dainty color, or related to the Virgin Mary. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink

I try to be a little subversive with color when I make baby gifts. Bold colors for both boys and girls, often with a little pink (or salmon). Rainbow yarns are my favorite: http://www.amazon.com/Lily-Sugar-Cream-Yarn-Psychedelic/dp/B004W8PCYU

I agree with everything here. This is how I live my life, and it sure makes it a ton easier to step out and help a crazy homeless person who needs food or water while I'm at work (I work at a grocery store) than it would be if I cared about what people thought.

My youngest son LOVED pink through his early years, then discovered peer pressure and HATED it. He has now worked out a pragmatic subversiveness and likes it but is careful about who knows this. He's 8.

Just to prove that I don't care what anyone here thinks of me, let me play Devils' advocate and note that Restorative Approaches and George MacDonald both preach the value of shame as a response to causing harm to others. Hold that vaccination - shame may yet have a vital role to play in our story ...

Oh, I agree. Shame is really a vital aspect of our moral psychology. I pondered making that clarification in the post but figured too many qualifications would mess with the flow of the post. My hope is that context clarifies what aspect of shame I'm talking out.

Among Christians there is nothing more subversive than universalism, which kind of kills two birds with one stone. I get to put absolute faith in the love, goodness, and power of God.... and annoy Christians at the same time.

And by the way Richard, I thought you were "strange and deviant" long before you admitted to liking pink. ;)

Funny. When I was working on my last degree at Colorado State, I got used to wearing my Birkenstocks with fleece socks, many of which were very loudly colored, with hiking shorts. When we moved to Amarillo in '95, well, that look was a bit, er, um, noteworthy. But folks got used to it. Long live portable conformity qua nonconformity!

Most here may be too young to remember the controversy, but there was great hoopla when Playboy magazine made the bold decision sometime around 1965 to "go pink" in response to upstart imitators like Hustler.

That forever changed any notion I or 10 million other teenaged boys would ever have about the color pink. There was more than a little subversion there.

Oh Patricia, I wish I did *not* know what you mean... I am determined, for the sake of my teenage daughter, to get this right, though. Do you have children? Daughter(s)? The pressure to conform to so many really unhealthy cultural "ideals" is relentless. Thinness, beauty of a specific kind, smart but not too smart, I could go on. A lot of the church culture for girls and women is at least as bad as the secular/mainstream culture. Countering the unhealthy body image messages is a full-time job for me as it is! I found a great blog written by a strong, young woman named Kate Fridkis aimed at encouraging girls and women to embrace their unique selves: 'Eat the Damn Cake'. My daughter reads that blog almost nightly :-) We have at least made progress on one front...

My son wore headbands when his hair was long - the ones that are like big hair bands. (And he did it at ACU.)

Oh, and being a woman who doesn't like pink can be looked down on, too. Do you think there is any chance my women friends will buy it if I tell them it's a spiritual discipline for me to not like pink like them?

I'm surprised, given your penchant for Walden, that you didn't quote either Thoreau or (perhaps more significantly) Emerson in this regard. But since you didn't, I'll give some choice bits from Emerson's "Self-Reliance":

- There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion...- Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.- Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members...The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.- What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

"In the early part of the 20th century, pink was a masculine hue, a pastel version of red. Blue, with its intimations of the Virgin Mary, constancy and faithfulness, was thought to be dainty.

In the 1940s, the societal norm inverted so that pink became appropriate for girls and blue appropriate for boys. Many attribute this to Germans imprisoned on accusations of homosexuality being forced to wear a pink triangle symbol by the Nazi Party."From 'A graphic history of the colour pink' - Colourlovers.com

Biologist PZ Myers recently wrote a great blog entry ripping apart the idea that there is any biological/evolutionary basis for a feminine preference for pink. He examines the recent history as well, pretty well establishing that the blue/pink dichotomy was a mid-20th-century marketing strategy. As a bonus, he ventures into cross-cultural blue/pink preferences. Highly recommended!http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/01/we_still_havent_explained_pink.php

Been thinking about the subject of this post, and was listening to Lady Gaga last night while driving. These lyrics sound pretty subversive to my ears:

"Jesus is the new blackPut it on,A-Amen fashionCelebrate, uh-huh!a new compassion...Celebrate, uh-huh!Style your passion...Celebrate, uh-huh!Wear out your visionJesus is the new black, aow!Amen, on the runway."

This reminds me of something that C.S. Lewis wrote in 'Mere Christianity.' That we are to "put on Christ" and become "little Christs" ourselves. Classic :-)

I love this. I have a three year old who got a pillow pet for Christmas as well as all of his girl cousins. His was a very boring dark brown moose while all the other cousins got very bright and multicolored unicorns and bumblebees. Naturally, we wanted a girl one. How am I supposed to explain to my three year old the socially defined law that liking a pink unicorn will either turn him gay, Ryan Seacrest, or, if Mark Driscoll has anything to say about it, nothing like Jesus?

Hi Susan, I have 2 sons and we're de-churched, so body image hasn't been a big deal here. I've also figured out that in order not to repeat the past, you have to look it in the eye, face it and stare it down. So I've raised my kids VERY differently, and gotten the result I'd hoped for: they're confident, hopeful, positive, hard workers, thinkers, dreamers, aspiring. But I was raised by a VERY perfectionistic, critical, unpleasable mother who plays a little game I've dubbed "Wounded Victorian Princess Martyr." (You can see the description here: http://parrishmiller.com/narcissists.html). It's been only this year that I've come to realize I don't have to apologize for existing, because I didn't have anything to do with it. And it wasn't my fault I wasn't a boy.

Patricia, I tried to follow the link, and what came up was a video about government? I think I grasp a bit of what you are describing in your relationship with your mother. (I had a step-mother like that -- "Mommy Dearest" to the core... To this day, my relationship with my father is non-existent. He's not a part of my life, because he comes as a package deal with "Mommy Dearest.") Richard/Dr. Beck's earlier post, 'Forget Your False Teachers' resonates with me on that facet of my past!

You know it, sister, on facing the demons down and thereby dispelling their power. My heart is happy to hear that in your journey as a mother, and in raising your sons, God has redeemed your "story." I see good coming from my own difficult, often painful, past as well, and am gratified to find that I have learned some things through it that I can pass on to my own children. I have a daughter (15) and a son (11).

The Susan G. Koman platform has a lot of guys at my husband's work on board with pink. They have adorned the aircraft with the signature pink ribbon, and a lot of guys wear the pink shirts, bandannas, rubber bracelets, hat pins and other gear, especially in October during the month of company fundraising For The Cure. When a cause takes up a color, its previous connotations tend to go moot.

I think your Otter Box is very stylish. In the church, I believe that we have to move beyond the passiveness of not shaming others to the active acceptance of them(us) in all their(our) weirdness and difference. Social norms be damned indeed. Look at Jesus. Jesus ate with sinners. Not in the "all have sinned" sense; in the prostitute-and-thieves sense. Who are we to defend normalcy? Or define it?Members at the church I grew up in are convinced that given the chance I will abandon scenic carpentry and return to acting. Most people I meet are mystified that I build sets for a living. Why? Because I am female, and not even particularly butch. Screw that, Jesus was a carpenter. I don't worry about what they think, but it would be nice for those of us with more obvious social deviations to not be viewed like exotic animals, pink plumage included.

Wow, Patricia. Thinking of you or anyone going through some (or all) of that which was described at the link was upsetting. I could see the resemblance, as I expected, in my step-mother. I have forgiven her, because I understand that she was a very disturbed woman (Her biological mother was an alcoholic, had numerous children and gave them all up for adoption). But: I knew a long time ago that I could not allow her to be in my life, even a little bit, for my own sanity and the well-being of my children. I will say that it is still difficult for me sometimes to discern whether someone is being straight with me or not. That's the lasting side-effect for me, I guess. It is interesting that you shared being "de-churched." I have slowly concluded that a lot of church culture, namely conservative evangelical church culture, is a very, very bad/unhealthy fit for me. Some people may thrive in that setting; it is a disaster for me! I'm grateful for the mainline congregation where my family and I belong. It's been a kinder, gentler faith community in many ways. Everyone in my family is much more at home with the doctrines, traditions, culture, all of it.

I love you for saying this. For being unafraid to enjoy the color that you like and not care what others think. I - as a mother and teacher - have always challenged those who would or wouldn't use, wear, eat, play with, etc.something, or teased those who did,because it was deemed for boys only, girls only or whatever.

I would like to join the He-Man Pink-Shirt Wearer club! Most of my shirts are from the mens' section, anyway, because they accomodate my god-given (and sports/martial arts augmented) broad shoulders and biceps.

Thanks for this post, Richard, and the suggestion that we as Christians "might need to learn to inoculate ourselves against social shaming." This would certainly make it easier for us to identify with those who are marginalized instead of worrying about other people identifying us as something we are not.

For those of you who don't normally wear pink shirts, the next Pink Shirt Day is coming up on February 29, 2012 -- at least here in Canada. Pink Shirt Day started a few years ago in Nova Scotia, Canada when "David Shepherd, Travis Price and their teenage friends organized a high-school protest to wear pink in sympathy with a Grade 9 boy who was being bullied…[They] took a stand against bullying when they protested against the harassment of a new Grade 9 student by distributing pink T-shirts to all the boys in their school." (Globe and Mail). From there it went national.

I'd like to see churches start a Pink Shirt Sunday to show that they stand against bullying ... but realize that this might be too much to ask for, considering that some christians even protest against anti-bullying sites and programs like It Gets Better. However, as David and Travis found, it only takes a few people to start something good!

Thanks for this post, Richard, and the suggestion that we as Christians "might need to learn to inoculate ourselves against social shaming." This would certainly make it easier for us to identify with those who are marginalized instead of worrying about other people identifying us as something we are not.

For those of you who don't normally wear pink shirts, the next Pink Shirt Day is coming up on February 29, 2012 -- at least here in Canada. Pink Shirt Day started a few years ago in Nova Scotia, Canada when "David Shepherd, Travis Price and their teenage friends organized a high-school protest to wear pink in sympathy with a Grade 9 boy who was being bullied…[They] took a stand against bullying when they protested against the harassment of a new Grade 9 student by distributing pink T-shirts to all the boys in their school." (Globe and Mail). From there it went national.

I'd like to see churches start a Pink Shirt Sunday to show that they stand against bullying ... but realize that this might be too much to ask for, considering that some christians even protest against anti-bullying sites and programs like It Gets Better. However, as David and Travis found, it only takes a few people to start something good!

I love this. It brings to mind a pair of pastel pink sunglasses I once had. I loved those sunglasses. They looked okay (in my humble opinion), but mostly I was continually surprised by the extreme reactions they elicited. It added an extra drama to life.

One particular remembrance that stays with me went something like this. I was once accosted by the scorer at a cricket game I was playing in, who could not fathom why I was wearing pink sunglasses. I was after all (a) a man, and (b) playing a sport, albeit one that is not always perceived as the most macho of past-times;Him (aggressively) "Are they your girlfriend's?"Me "Nope. They're mine."[beat]Him (clearly bewildered) "But...why?"Me "Why what?"Him (now disbelieving) "You know..."Me (obviously knowing but not playing along) "Know what?"Him (almost angry) "They're f***ing pink man!"Me "I know. I like them."Him (shaking his head and puffing his cheeks) "F*** me. Some people."Some people indeed.

I wonder why there is a need for "observable" indicators and symbols relating to gender in different societies? It's as if it needs to be immediately known whether you are male and female. Do you think think there is any relationship between it and the status differentials that exist in most societies between genders? <-This might be a bit of a cliche but it was worth a shot. By the way, wish I would have taken one of your classes when I was at ACU. The students there love you.